


How the mighty have fallen

by myn_x



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Enemies to Friends, Introspection, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 06:12:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9870989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myn_x/pseuds/myn_x
Summary: Oikawa Tooru just wants to live a peaceful life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this](http://ohmykokuroo.tumblr.com/post/157452167281/for-tropes-enemies-to-lovers-sick-fic-where-due), for my dear friend @kaguneko

Tooru thought living above the clinic was pretty convenient until the day he wakes up two hours early to someone pounding on his door.

He groans as he stretches and rolls out of bed, tugging on some sweatpants he’d tossed aside the night before. Whoever’s disturbing his precious sleep will have to just deal with his shirtlessness. It won’t take long to send them off anyway.

Still rubbing sleep out of his eyes, Tooru pulls open the door and starts to snap that hello, yes, you _do_ realize it is eight in the morning, what could you _possibly_ want right now, but the words die in his throat. He blinks a few times just to make sure he isn’t still asleep because, oh man, were these the last two people in the universe he wants to see at this godawful hour.

He can get through scheduled appointments but this, this is just too much.

“Too~ru~! I brought you a gift,” Tendou says with a flourish, stepping aside so that Tooru can take in the sight of a very obviously sick Ushijima. His face is drawn and pale, and fatigue weighs his shoulders down.

Tendou and Ushijima are a step below him, which means Tooru has the rare advantage of height. Naturally, he glowers down at them, forcing his response through clenched teeth. “Don’t call me that. And in what manner of speaking is _he_ a gift?”

Tendou gawks at Tooru’s bare chest, neck bent at an unnatural angle. “Is this a bad time?”

If there’s one word to describe Tendou Satori, it’s _aggravating_. But at least his obnoxious red hair isn’t spiked to all heaven, and Tooru has the time of day to thank for that.  

“We should go, Tendou.” The face Ushijima makes at his friend is pained and miserable; he clearly wants to be there as much as Tooru does. His voice is hoarse -- Tooru imagines that it hurts when he speaks. “I’m not sure why you brought me here. I’m fine. It’s just a cold.”

“Stubborn as always, Wakatoshi-kun~” Tendou says. Ushijima is anything but fine -- his eyes are bloodshot and half-lidded and he’s leaning on Tendou, who wraps an arm around his shoulders.

The show of weakness makes Tooru uncomfortable. “Why bring him here, of all places? I’m a physical therapist, not an urgent care medic,” he huffs. “Not to mention, _it’s eight in the morning_.”

Tendou nudges Ushijima forward with a pointed look at Tooru. “He wouldn’t let me take him to a real doctor.”

"Are you implying that I am not a real doctor, Ten-chan?" Tooru infuses his words with as much sugary poison as he can. “I have several degrees that say otherwise. I can grab them.”

“Your insecurity makes it so easy to get under your skin, Tooru,” Tendou says with a smirk. “Are you gonna take him or not?”

Ushijima groans, drawing Tooru’s attention. He reaches to brush the back of his fingers against Ushijima’s forehead -- he doesn’t like the man but it’s different, somehow, with him in this state. He just can’t muster up any of the usual animosity or old jealousy. (He _can_ make him wait a few minutes on his front steps, though, so he can bicker with Tendou.)

Ushijima’ s brow is clammy, and Tooru sighs in defeat. He grips Ushijima’s shoulder, and the taller man lets himself be pulled forward into the apartment.

When he’s halfway through the door, Tooru says, “Well I can’t leave you to die, Ushiwaka. It would ruin my reputation if you croaked on my doorstep.”

“How chivalrous of you,” Tendou muses. He crosses his arms, and there’s a satisfied grin on his face, like he’s playing one of his mind games and winning at it.

Tooru can’t help but mumble a curse as he kicks the door shut in his face.

 

~

 

Normally there would have been a certain satisfaction in seeing the great Ushijima Wakatoshi be brought to his knees by something so mundane as a cold.

But there’s something human his little shiver, in the way he rubs his arms and looks around with uncertainty, that unsettles Tooru. He turns up the air, even though he likes it cold, because he can’t truthfully say he wants Ushijima suffer more than he already is.

“A bath will make you feel better. This way.” Tooru’s words are clipped as he walks past Ushijima, who hesitates before following him.

“You...don’t have to do this, Oikawa.”

“True, and these are things you could be doing yourself, in your own home,” Tooru says. “But you’re here now.”

This is like a reverse house call, Tooru thinks as he makes him sit while the tub fills, asking him questions, taking his pulse, and doing what he can without any tools or equipment. Ushijima has a slight fever, a cough, and a sore throat, he’s lethargic, and he has no appetite. He was right -- it _is_ just a common cold.

(Ushijima is all hard lines and edges but everywhere Tooru touches him is soft and warm. Did he linger where he felt for the pulse in Ushijima’s wrist, and where his hands ghosted along his neck, checking for swollen lymph nodes? He tells himself he didn’t. He tells himself it _is_ a reverse house call, and that Ushijima is another patient. And it’s not a lie, not really.)

The bath doesn’t take long to fill. Once Ushijima is undressed, he slips into the tub, bracing himself with trembling arms as he sinks into the water with a throaty sigh.

“I put some stuff in the water that should help relieve your symptoms,” Tooru says from the doorway. “Don’t drown in my tub, Ushiwaka.”

Ushijima only grunts in acknowledgment.

He’s grown, and he can take care of himself, like Tooru already said. Tendou dumped him here, probably to torture them both, and there’s not much Tooru can do other than to just accept it.

The sooner he treats Ushijima, the sooner he can leave.

But this feels less like treatment and more like some domestic shit that Tooru really isn’t in the mood for. Even if it wasn’t Ushijima Wakatoshi in his bathroom right now.

Tooru phones the clinic to tell them he’s not coming in; by this time, someone should be there setting up for the day. He gets Suga, and he tells him to call Daichi in and have him handle his patients for the day because he has “matters to attend to,” promising that he’ll cover two of Daichi’s shifts next week. Which really isn’t fair. He’ll argue with the devil about it later, but he lets it go for now because it’s not like he can leave Ushijima alone in his flat while he works.

No matter how harmless he currently is.

After hanging up, Tooru beelines for the bathroom and sticks his head in. Ushijima’s resting his head against the rim of the tub, which can’t be comfortable. Tooru grabs a towel and folds it, poking Ushijima until he lifts his head so he can slide it underneath.

Ushijima settles against the towel and his eyes slide closed again. He passes a wet hand over his face, and droplets cling to his lashes. They look like tears.

There's a vulnerability in that flushed face that pisses Tooru off.

Ushijima cracks open an eye and mumbles, “Don’t look at me like that, Oikawa.”

Tooru leaves the bathroom to avoid conversation he doesn’t want to have, focusing instead on finding and putting on a tank top. Since it’s too hot for a t-shirt or his alien hoodie.

Ushijima is probably the least likely out of anyone Tooru knows to drown in a bathtub, but that doesn’t stop Tooru from settling down on the floor in the hallway once he pulls the tank over his head. From there he can hear Ushijima’s even breathing, which is made slightly ragged by congestion.

While Tooru keeps his unnecessary vigil he considers why he resents Ushijima so much, why his powerlessness in this moment makes him hate Ushijima more and less at the same time.

There’s the obvious: his stubborn, effortless confidence and his bluntness, and the way he understood Tooru just by watching him from the other side of the net. And when that ended… Since Tooru left volleyball because of his knee and Ushijima and Tendou attempted to go pro, it always puts a bitter taste in his mouth every time he thinks about them.

He’d worked himself nearly to death and still had to give up the game, and now they rub it in his face every time they come to the clinic with their aches and pains. He can’t tell if it’s worse when they’re together or come separately, and he can only tolerate it if he reminds himself over and over that he’s getting paid to work with them, and that their sessions never last more than half an hour.

He hates everything the two stand for, and they stand for all that he’s lost.

As Tooru works he knows that whatever injuries or soreness they have, it’s volleyball that did it. Tooru doesn’t want to admit it but it makes him ridiculously jealous, that they’re still _fixable_ while his knee had faked him out, forcing him to eat his parting words to Ushijima and start physical therapy -- which he then fell in love with, so he spent years at university only to find a job at the PT clinic near where Ushijima and Tendou still play. The irony of it all is morbidly hilarious.

Tooru isn’t one to wish ill on others but it doesn’t feel right that he’s the one who had the career-ending injury when he’s clearly always been the one who wanted to play the most.

So to see Ushijima at probably his weakest is paradoxically infuriating and comforting; he’s supposed to stay strong so Tooru can hate him, but Tooru realizes that, like anyone else, Ushijima must have moments of fragility.

And that those moments are sometimes the most beautiful.   

 

~

 

Tooru still isn’t convinced that this is all part of some weird nightmare. Ushijima is lying on his couch, in one of Tooru’s shirts (that he _thought_ would fit but is a little too snug, especially around his chest and shoulders) and his boxers.

The timer he set beeps and he turns off the stove, and then shares out some of the soup he’d made last night because he’d been craving something warm and savory.

“Soup is good for sick people, right Ushiwaka?” Tooru asks. He standing before Ushijima’s reclining figure, waiting for him to take the bowl.

He does, and he raises it to his nose to take a deep meditative breath. Tooru waits because Ushijima seems to be on the verge of saying something.

“I can’t drink this.”

The heavens seem determined to test Tooru’s patience. He wants to rend them, wring them dry of their twisted humor. “What do you-- _yes you can_!”  

“No, I cannot.” Ushijima fixes him with a hard look, as if he did something offensive and not the other way around.

“ _Why not_.”

“It has ginger in it.”

“And?”

“I hate ginger.”

Something in Tooru breaks and he laughs. “Stop being rude, Ushiwaka. You probably can’t taste anything right now anyway!”

“I can still smell it, which means I will be able to taste it.”

“You’re impossible. How was I to know--”

“I hate ginger almost as much as I hate how you blame and punish yourself."

It’s like a slap to the face, his graceless candor that’s always left Tooru feeling bare and exposed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ushijima.” The slip into using his real name just happens. Tooru isn’t laughing anymore.

“I know that the bitterness you hold onto makes you suffer mentally more than you ever did physically,” Ushijima says.

The soft huskiness of his voice echoes in Tooru’s ears. He doesn’t want to hear this, not from him. “The next time you--” He cuts himself short because there won’t be a next time; there won’t. So he tries again, “I need you to get better so I don’t have to feel guilty about being an asshole to you.”

Ushijima attempts a shaky laugh that morphs into a cough, and Tooru begrudgingly pats his back, tears pricking his eyes because even after all this time, Ushijima can still read him like it’s nothing, and everything.

Even after all this time, Ushijima has still only wanted what’s good for Tooru, stinging frankness aside, and Tooru doesn’t know how to handle that, so he falls quiet.

 _It's like I'm at work_ , Tooru thinks as he tends to Ushijima. But he doesn't keep checking his PT patients for fever or hold straws to their lips so they can sip water or pile them with blankets or let them be this sleepy and defenseless on his couch.

He’s caring for Ushijima because this is work, except it isn’t. He could have slammed the door in both their faces instead of just Tendou’s, and then he wouldn’t be here with this man whom he hates the most and yet not at all. Who has never hated him as much as he wanted to believe otherwise.

Tooru lost sleep and a work day, but he really doesn’t mind. Just as he wouldn’t mind a next time. Maybe he’ll remember to not even bother with ginger.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://ohmykokuroo.tumblr.com) || [other tumblr](http://zeppellii.tumblr.com) || [twitter](https://twitter.com/lovedeluxxxe)


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